He kissed me
by bluejaymewjay
Summary: Oneshot drabble. Rachel has had a crush on their choir teacher for a while now, and she's told Kurt, one of her only friends, all about it. She's told Mr. Schue everything- and now she has a lot to tell Kurt.


Kurt knew from the moment Rachel auditioned for Glee club that this day would come.

Rachel was standing in the girl's bathroom, holding both of Kurt's hands in a painfully tight grip and beaming excitedly. They'd come to the bathroom in the music hall, which most girls avoided since half the ceiling was nearly falling in, dusting the floor with plaster more and more each day; and since they'd come during class, even the hall was nearly empty. Kurt could hear the band thundering away at a song across the hall. It was loud enough for no one to overhear them, and lonely enough to eliminate any risk of being walked in on.

"You have to _guess_," Rachel was insisting, refusing to tell Kurt what it was she had dragged him here for. If he was being honest, he knew full well what was happening. He didn't want to say it out loud for fear of his suspicion being confirmed.

"I don't _know, _Rachel. Just tell me," he said for the third time. He thought she might opt to say "_just guess, Kurt," _once more, but luckily, she spared him.

"Remember what I was talking about the other day?" Rachel asked.

Kurt remembered. She was talking about how she was going to tell Will everything. She was going to tell him that she never got over her crush, and she thought he was an amazing, smart, talented, attractive man. She kept telling Kurt, "_I don't expect anything to happen, but I just have to tell him, you know?" _And if Rachel wanted to tell someone something, he didn't doubt that it would happen.

"No," Kurt lied.

Rachel rolled her eyes, saying, "Come on, Kurt," incredulously. The giddy smile never left her face. "I was talking about Will."

The way she called him _Will _without hesitating made him cringe a bit. A few weeks ago, when she'd first admitted to Kurt all about her teacher crush, she was almost embarrassed to call him anything besides "Mr. Schue", and sometimes, she couldn't even seem to say that much.

"Right." Kurt blinked. She was hurting his hands.

"I just had to tell him how I feel."

"Yeah, I get it. I remember you saying that."

"So I told him everything," Rachel went on.

"How'd that go?" Kurt asked.

She thankfully let go of his hands, blushing a little. "Well," she began, but stopped, suddenly timid.

"Come on, you have to tell me now. You told your crush how you feel, saying this to me should be small," Kurt said. He wanted to go back to class and not have to listen to her gush. He felt bad, but it worried him too much, hearing his friend go on about an older man. Rachel wasn't exactly an impressionable youth, but he knew that she'd do a lot for love. Under other circumstances, it may not have been so alarming, but considering she was under 18 and Mr. Schue was their teacher, it made him anxious.

He didn't expect that anything big would have happened. He always knew Mr. Schue as being pretty sensible.

But then Rachel giggled and said, "He kissed me."

It was amazing, the way words that chilled someone's blood so thoroughly could have such an inverse reaction on the speaker. Kurt's eyes widened and he struggled to form a sentence to express his shock, while Rachel flushed an even darker shade of pink and somehow managed to smile even wider. She scuffed the toe of her shoe against the plaster-coated floor.

"He _what_?" Kurt managed, blinking rapidly. He grabbed Rachel by the shoulder. "Rachel, this is a big deal."

"I know," she said, misunderstanding.

"No, I mean, this is _bad,"_ Kurt went on. Rachel's smile slipped. "You can't do this, Rachel. He's too old, and he's your teacher, and I'm pretty sure he has a girlfriend or _something."_

"But we have so much in common, Kurt, and just because he's older doesn't mean it's wrong or that it can't work out," Rachel argued. The smile was gone. "And he won't be my teacher for long. In two more years I'll graduate and I'll be eighteen."

"Rachel, that doesn't make it okay." Kurt could feel his friend getting more and more angry with him as he protested, but he couldn't let it go. "What happens if the school finds out?"

"No one has to know," Rachel insisted.

"You honestly think you can keep something that big a secret for two years?"

"Why not?" Rachel shot back. "My dads are never home, I could go anywhere and they'd never notice. The school board is lazy and would do anything to keep themselves from controversy or the actual need to do something. Besides, Kurt, I don't exactly have a lot of people flocking to see what I'm doing with my life."

So Kurt wedged the knife deeper. "What if Sue Sylvester found out?"

Rachel hesitated to answer. "You don't think she would, do you?"

"She has an eye on the glee club even when we think she doesn't. Do you honestly think she wouldn't?" Rachel fell silent. Kurt let go of her shoulder. "I'm sorry, I know this means a lot to you. It just wouldn't work."

"It means so much to me," Rachel said, voice barely a whisper. She looked up at him, and though her eyes were soft, her jaw was set defiantly. "Kurt, I understand that it's wrong, but he kissed me back. The kids our age won't even look at me." She looked away from him, her brown eyes shining with the beginnings of tears. "Kids our age throw slushies at me and call me names. And now this grown man kissed me back. Someone who's wiser and knows what he's doing kissed _me_."

And Kurt understood. It wasn't just a crush, it was her self esteem.

"I'm sorry. I know that it sucks, Rachel. I just don't want to see this end badly for you," Kurt said. He didn't want to crush whatever this was now, because he was afraid he might crush that tiny glimmer of hope that maybe she wasn't as bad as she thought she was, too. But he was nervous. Scared and nervous. If it didn't work out- and he was very sure it wouldn't- who could say what would happen?

But Rachel said, "It won't end badly," and he could tell she'd convinced herself of that. "Thank you for worrying about me, Kurt. I can handle it. I promise."

Kurt smiled and replied, "That's what friends are for."

Rachel left the bathroom a few minutes later. Kurt said he'd stay behind, telling her he wanted to fix up his hair, that it had been bothering him all day. He ended up standing in front of the mirror and staring himself down for the next five minutes.

_Please_, he thought, _let this work itself out somehow._


End file.
